After its presentation of the Asiana exhibition in Venice, at Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, in 1995, Fondazione Mudima now exhibits a series of Mono-ha installations on the part of the group of ten artists who came together under that name in Japan in 1968, and who then continued to exhibit together until 1974. “Mono-ha” is best translated as “The School of Things,” and the term refers to the artists’ use of simple materials, both natural and industrial, presented almost “nakedly,” with their essence remaining in no way altered by the artists’ interventions. Cloth, rocks, wood, paper, rope, and glass are the principal materials employed in these installations, and function on terms of a re-examination of the relationship between art and the human being, and as well of our typically human interactions with space and physical materials, and also with the patterns of shifting social realities. The Mono-ha group of artists (presented here in its entirety) consists of Koji Enokura, Noriyuki Haraguchi, Susumu Koshimizu, Lee Ufan, Katsuhiko Narita, Nobuo Sekine, Kishio Suga, Jiro Takamatsu, Noboru Takayama and Katsuro Yoshida.
The Mono-Ha artists aimed to establish a more immediate rapport with things, and to draw them into relationship with one another, allowing their juxtapositions to produce new meaning and to introduce the public to novel ways of seeing and understanding the world of reality that surrounds us. The artist is less concerned with “creativity” than with a repositioning of material objects in the light of a new and powerful dynamism of phenomenological forces, dimensions, textures, and physical qualities in which the relationships and resultant tensions between objects and space take on cardinal importance. Mono-ha is now increasingly recognized as one of the major expressions of the contemporary Japanese art of the second half of the twentieth century, and its interest lay in searching out and revealing the realities beyond appearance. Lee Ufan, who in addition to promoting the founding of the group was also its theoretician, has written, “In truth, the work of the artist has nothing to do with offering peace and serenity to people’s minds, and instead is entirely directed toward exploring the degree to which the gaze of the individual can be released and turned away from the things which have always and collectively been believed to constitute reality.”
The rediscovery and critical re-evaluation Mono-ha is one of today’s most pressing arguments in the world of contemporary art, as attested by the recent shows at Punta della Dogana in Venice and the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as by the presence of Mono-ha works in the collections of London’s Tate Modern, New York’s MOMA and numerous other museums of international standing. With its particular attention to the world of industry, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the dynamics of nature, Mono-ha is an undeniable example of the present-day evolution of contemporary art towards themes connected to ecological sustainability and the problems that center on our planet’s natural environment.

Once a laboratory within the former industrial complex, the galleria Sud—flowing through the Deposito’s wide spaces—hosts An Introduction: an intense exhibition project—emerged from a dialogue between Miuccia Prada and Germano Celant—alluding to a path between institutional and personal, leading to methods of research and collecting. It intertwines a study and passion for art that has taken on public and private characteristics and led to the opening of the Fondazione.
Here the interest for the aesthetic and political issues addressed by artists is compared to the knowledge and the practice of experimental and historic cultures, from the Renaissance to modernity, evolving from a basic, minimalist approach, to a complex museum display.
The sequence of spaces and the choice of artworks, installed in relation to colors and period materials, suggest an itinerary of interests and commitment. It begins with a reflection on the self then develops with a choice of visual territories connected to the artistic events of the 1960s, from New Dada to Minimal Art.
This research, and the determination to collect its testimony, has influenced the “system of life,” fostering passion and involvement with an art that questions reality. Investigation of the contemporary artistic narratives orients knowledge toward a temporal totality— with its objects and environments—from antiquity to the present day.
The translation of notions and passions into collection is documented through the quadreria: a gallery of artworks that indicates the wide-ranging oscillation of attention for art’s manifestations.
Within the Deposito, surprise endings with vehicles of diverse natures indicates a convergence between art and life, within which a dialectic between autonomy and function, artifact and product is implemented. Here art expands into daily life. Objects become instrument of a way of thinking and viewing that goes beyond tradition.
The result is a body of artworks and objects that supply information about the past, present and future of an existential adventure. They introduce an image of impassioned, committed people who have followed a route of active and radiating awareness: the reaction to the vital strength of ideas becomes the focus of a lifetime.

The spaces of the Cisterna –a preexisting building made up of three adjacent vertical structures which once contained enormous cisterns used to produce distillates– host Trittico, a dynamic display strategy devised by the Thought Council (Shumon Basar, Nicholas Cullinan, Cédric Libert).
Three carefully selected works from the Collezione Prada are hereon be installed at a time, periodically rotating.
The Trittico display initiative highlights a number of important ideas.
The first is that our experience of a work of art is always relational, and understood through other works, either from the past or from parallel times. The second idea is that a collection such as the Collezione Prada, which spans works from the 16th to 21st centuries, contains many hidden histories of interpretation that exceed orthodox accounts.
By focusing upon three works at a time, Trittico prises out unexpected patterns between seemingly dissimilar artists and their works.
Lastly, it also underlines the importance of encountering artistic works in the first person, under conditions quite different from those of a canonical museum.
Here, visitors are immersed in a tangible three-dimensionality and rarified illumination –characteristics that no technological device can yet reproduce.
The first selection for Trittico includes ‘Case II’ (1968) by Eva Hesse, ‘Lost Love’ (2000) by Damien Hirst and ‘1 metro cubo di terra’ (1967) by Pino Pascali, three works that all develop minimalistic geometries by associating objects and elements of nature with the shape of the cube.
Order, disorder, the complexity of human affairs versus natural materials. When set into the literal framework of a cube, the contents become a system of meaning. One that is as open as it is seemingly closed.

The exhibition
On Wednesday April 8th 2015 at 7pm HangarBicocca will open “Double Bind & Around”, the first solo exhibition in Italy dedicated to Juan Muñoz, curated by Vicente Todolí. The artist, who died in 2001, was one of the leading exponents of European sculpture of the last two decades of the 20th century. On the occasion of the exhibition, HangarBicocca is showing his most important work, Double Bind, which was made in 2001 for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London and never exhibited to the public afterwards. The exhibition also includes some of his most significant works, including The Wasteland and Many Times, making this an important opportunity to grasp the work of a great artist who reinterpreted the tradition of classic sculpture on the basis of 20th century avant-gardes. Mainly known for his sculptures in papier maché, resin and bronze, Juan Muñoz often took an interest in writing and in sound art, creating audio pieces and compositions for the radio.

The art of Juan Muñoz (1953-2001) reintroduces human figure at the center of architectonical and sculptural space. Puppets, acrobats, ventriloquists, dwarfs and ballerinas are but some of the characters that inhabit his works, alongside anonymous orient-looking figures, whose presence recalls ambiguous and contradictive scenarios. Many museums have dedicated great retrospective exhibitions of his works. These include the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2001), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2002), The Art Institute of Chicago (2002), the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2003), the Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble (2007), Tate Modern, London (2008) and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009).

Through the work of more than a hundred international artists, the exhibition The Great Mother analyzes the iconography of motherhood in the art and visual culture of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, from early avant-garde movements to the present.
Whether as a symbol of creativity or as a metaphor for art itself, the archetype of the mother has been a central figure in the history of art, from the Venuses of the Stone Age to the “bad girls” of the postfeminist era and through centuries of religious works depicting innumerable maternity scenes. The more familiar version of “Mamma” has also become a stereotype closely tied to the image of Italy.
In undertaking an analysis of the representation of motherhood, the exhibition The Great Mother traces a history of women's empowerment, chronicling gender struggles, sexual politics, and clashes between tradition and emancipation.

With an exhibition layout that covers more than 2000 square meters (20,000 square feet) on the piano nobile of Palazzo Reale – a neoclassical building which preserves many of its original decorations and period details – The Great Mother brings contemporary art into the heart of the Expo in città program, linking art history to the most pressing issues of our time. The Great Mother mixes past and present, juxtaposing contemporary art, historical works, and artifacts from the world of film and literature, and weaving a rich tapestry of associations and images.

The Great Mother is an exhibition promoted by the Cultural Office of the City of Milan, conceived and produced by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in partnership with Palazzo Reale for Expo in città 2015
BNL BNP Paribas Group is main sponsor of the exhibition.

Curated by Germano Celant
Exhibition Design: Studio Italo Rota
Graphic Design: Irma Boom Office
Catalogue: Electa
The intricate relationship between the arts and food will be retraced and analysed in the Arts & Foods pavilion, the only thematic area of Expo Milan 2015 to be held in the city. La Triennale, will host the event from 9 April to 1 November 2015.
Located in both the indoor and outdoor areas of La Triennale – 7000 square metres of building and garden space – Arts & Foods will focus on all those visual, sculptural, object-based and environmental forms that, ever since 1851, the year of the first Expo in London, have revolved around the world of food, nutrition, and dining together. The exhibition will provide a worldwide overview of the interaction between aesthetics and design in the rituals of eating, as an international event that will use different media to take visitors through time, from the historic to the contemporary, and through forms of expression, creativity and communication in all cultural areas.
Curated by Germano Celant and with the display design by Studio Italo Rota, Arts & Foods will use a multi-level, multi-sensorial approach to examine the developments and solutions adopted with regard to food. It will range from kitchen implements to laid tables and picnics, and public aspects in the form of bars and restaurants. It will also examine the changes brought about in road, air and space travel, as well as the design of buildings devoted to the rituals and production of food. All of this will be accompanied by the testimony of artists, writers, film makers, graphic designers, musicians, photographers, architects and designers who, from Impressionism and Divisionism to the historical avant-garde movements, and from Pop Art to the latest artistic research, have helped develop the vision and consumption of food.
This journey through artefacts and time will offer a creative reflection on “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”, the theme of the World Expo in Milan, with hundreds and hundreds of books, objects and documents from museums, public and private institutions, collectors and artists around the world.
“La Triennale di Milano is the only Italian institution with a multidisciplinary approach to the visual and applied arts,” said Claudio De Albertis, President of La Triennale. “It was thus only natural to accept the proposal of the Expo to put on the Arts & Foods exhibition as well as the eighth edition of the Triennale Design Museum, devoted to such an essential subject as that of the Expo. So, with Silvana Annichiarico, the director of the Triennale Design Museum, we asked Germano Celant and Italo Rota to create and design Body Snatchers in the Kitchen. We are confident that we shall achieve excellent results all round.”
Arts & Foods involves all media and art forms: from painting to sculpture, video, installation, photography and advertising, to design and architecture, movies, music and literature,” said Germano Celant, curator of the pavilion. “It is in chronological order, covering the period from 1851 – the date of the first Expo, in London, and the starting point of modernity – through to the present day, with environments illustrating the spaces for eating together, in both the private and the public domain, from the dining room to the kitchen, and from cafés to eating on the move, in which furniture, objects, household appliances and works of art create a narrative of great visual and sensorial impact.